Corebridge Review.
Please note: Corebridge Financial is just a rebranding of American International Group (AIG), and AIG has the lowest possible rating with the Better Business Bureau, a grade of F.
Agreeing with their F grade, every part of my experience with Corebridge / AIG has been bad. I post this website to warn others not to do business with this company.
Under the AIG umbrella is:
American General Life Insurance Company (AGL)
The United States Life Insurance Company in the City of New York (USL)
The Variable Annuity Life Insurance Company (VALIC)
Do not do business with any of these companies either.
My father died in August 2022. As part of settling his estate, the executor mailed me a form from AIG in October 2023. There were no instructions included with this form. Because of the estrangement within my family, the person named as the executor does not return my calls.
The AIG form that I received has eleven sections. If you do not know what product you are making a claim for, there is no way to know which of these eleven sections you are to fill out. In the words of my financial advisor, what they sent me is an “Everything form.”
Section 1 Contract, Deceased & Beneficiary Information
Section 2 Spousal Continuation
Section 3 Deferral Option
Section 4 Annuity Income Payments
Section 5 Lump Sum Cash Distribution Election
Section 6 Transfer, Rollover, or Exchange to Another Carrier
Section 7 Deceased’s Required Minimum Distributions
Section 8 Beneficiary Designation Change
Section 9 Payment Delivery Method
Section 10 Federal and State Tax Withholding Information
Section 11 Affirmations/Signatures
Worse than having no instructions, the people who answer the AIG 800 number printed on the form will provide no information about which section of the form to fill out. Apparently, AIG has outsourced their customer support to the Philippines, and the people there are instructed to give no information about what investment a customer holds or what can be done with it.
Trying to get answers, I called the AIG 800 number many times. Each call required going through their phone tree, and then waiting on hold for up to twenty minutes to speak with a representative. The person who answered used the policy number to verify my identity and then transferred me to a representative.
After going through this process, it is critically important that you keep your voice calm. If these representatives hear any irritation in the way you speak, they will hang up on you, and you will need to repeat the entire process again.
What I really wanted was a statement of the account. This would tell me what the investment was and how much money I was making a decision about. I was told that they would not send me a statement, and that they would only discuss the amount of money held with the policyholder, the person they already had the death certificate for.
Since I’m retired, I had the time to call that 800 number many times, trying to get the information I needed. I spent three afternoons working on this, several hours each time. In all of those calls, as far as I know, I never talked with the same person twice, and I had to explain what information I needed from the beginning, every call.
A few times, after the person I spoke with did not give me useful information, I asked to speak with their supervisor. This almost always resulted in them disconnecting the call.
Finally, when I was convinced that I was not going to receive the information I needed from the people who answered the AIG 800 number, acting blind, I decided to select Section 5: Lump Sum Cash Distribution Election. I figured I’d just get my inheritance and figure out what I would do with the money later.
Once I decided which section of the form to fill out, it took another long call to the AIG 800 number for them to tell me what information they needed to deposit this money into my checking account. It took another two weeks before this money was transferred.
After I filled out that section of the form and sent it in, I suggested that my sister not make her claim until my settlement with AIG was complete. In this way, we could find out if I had made the right decision.
After I received the money, in a three-way phone call I wasn’t on, between my sister and our financial advisor, an AIG representative let it slip that the investment we held was an inherited IRA. This changed everything.
Because I could not get the information I needed, I had made a horrible mistake. By asking for a Lump Sum Cash Distribution, what I had done was cash out my father’s IRA, instead of rolling it over. This would have terrible consequences.
One consequence would be an enormous tax burden in the year I cashed it out, causing over one third of my inheritance to be owed to the IRS. But worse for me, would be the loss of my disability benefits.
Because my income is low, in addition to disability benefits, I also receive assistance for my utility bills, and food at the local pantry. If I took this lump sum amount, this would show as income and I would lose all these forms of assistance. An IRA rollover would not have these consequences.
Once my financial advisor told me the problem, I asked him if there was any way to correct it. He told me the fix would require returning the money to AIG, so they could reissue the settlement, characterized as an IRA instead of a lump sum distribution.
Based on my experience speaking with the people at AIG’s 800 number, I was sure the people in the Philippines could not correct this problem.
The address on AIG’s “Everything form” is in Texas, so what I tried to find was any number that would connect me with someone here in the states. I called every United States phone number I could find on every AIG website. About half of them were disconnected.
Most of the people I did reach were AIG sales representatives, who did not have a number of someone I could talk with at their main office in Texas. When nothing else worked, I returned to calling the 800 number, several times, explaining the same problem each time. As I guessed, no one at AIG’s 800 number could connect me with someone who could help solve the problem.
Because of the luck our financial advisor had on the call with my sister, he and I made a three-way call to AIG’s 800 number one more time. During that call, we spoke with a man who told us that he generally didn’t answer the phone, but said he could file a ticket for someone in the right department to call me back. He said it would take ten days for somebody to reach out to me. We stressed to him the importance of getting this done quickly, before the end of 2023. Receiving a call back took sixteen days. I was never able to reach that man back again.
When the woman from AIG called, I wasn’t home. I took her call on my cell phone while I was out shopping. The high point of her call was that she said my mistake could be corrected as my advisor had described. She acted as if returning that sum of money to them and having them return it to me, re-characterized as an IRA, wasn’t a big deal. This made me wonder how many other times they had had to do this.
She told me she would file a ticket at AIG that would start this process in another ten days. After two weeks I tried to call her back and her number was disconnected. I was panicked. I went back to calling every number I could find on every AIG website. A week later, I did get a phone call from someone at AIG who had been assigned to the case.
After an initial call where I shared with that representative all that I had already gone through with AIG, she said she would send me the paperwork needed to return the money. This would allow me to fill out the correct part of the “Everything form” and re-file my claim.
When I hadn’t received this paperwork two weeks later, I called her and shared my concern that it was nearly the end of the year. I told her that I worried that if this problem was not corrected by the end of 2023, AIG might issue a 1099 and the lump sum distribution would show up on my taxes as income.
She assured me that the paperwork was being generated, but explained that it was being delayed because the letter was being processed through their legal department. What I received was a letter saying I could return the money for re-characterization, but only under the condition that I not sue AIG. I signed the letter and returned a copy of the “Everything Form,” this time filling out Section 6 Transfer, Rollover, or Exchange to Another Carrier. I could never reach that woman by phone again.
The next mistake was from our side. When I received the money from AIG I did not leave it in my checking account, I transferred it to the money market in my brokerage account. After I signed the AIG paperwork, I sent it to my broker and gave him instructions to send the money to AIG.
Unfortunately, the amount my broker sent back to AIG was rounded to the nearest thousand dollars, not to the last dollar. AIG would not complete the re-characterization without receiving all the money back to the last cent. Then, in a separate transfer, my broker corrected this small error.
It was now early in February 2024 and I had started receiving 1099s from other companies as needed to file my taxes. I was increasingly concerned that if AIG did not re-characterize this money in time, they would send me a 1099 and I would have to argue with the IRS about this lump sum distribution.
Then, in one last delay, I was sent an email from the last woman I spoke with at AIG, that a new account number had been issued for the re-characterized IRA transfer. The email required that I send a third copy of the “Everything Form,” this time signed and filled out using the new account number.
I filled out a new copy of the form and sent it to my broker to forward to AIG. However, before he could forward this form as requested, AIG had already transferred the money into my inherited IRA rollover in my brokerage account.
Although not a Christian, I do appreciate people who pray to Saint Jude for eight days and promise publication. My broker told me that this was one of the worst financial transfers he had ever been part of, and as a writer I promised to him I would write up and post what we had both been through.
Thoughts:
All of this could have been avoided if someone in my first call to AIG had told me that what I had inherited was my father’s IRA.
I think about all the other people who have not caught this mistake, and those who lack my persistence to reach someone at AIG. They must just pay the many thousands of dollars in taxes resulting from not having this mistake corrected, and lose all that money.
I also note that AIG recognizes the liability of what they put me through, as demonstrated by their requiring that I sign a legal document not to sue them. I feel that letter was a form of extortion, sign or we won’t recharacterize your settlement.
Although not my problem, the way AIG does business is massively inefficient. There must have been a dozen or more AIG employees involved in correcting this problem, all of which could have been avoided by one person in the first phone call.
Finally, since I have never seen a statement from my father’s account, I have no proof that AIG has sent me all the money. The amount that I inherited could be twice as much as the people at AIG have sent me. AIG may have stolen part of my inheritance money and I would have no way of knowing.
In conclusion: Don’t do business with AIG.
The impression that I get about AIG Is that they are a group of people who work from home, part-time, and have very little interest in customer satisfaction. If they do have an office somewhere, it’s a single room off a fluorescent lit hallway. Inside there is a telephone sitting on a Formica desk, covered manila folders sliding to the floor, each folder containing a person’s life savings.
If you care about your loved ones, and plan to leave them money, do not subject them to doing business with AIG.
Do not do business with AIG.
Sincerely, Phil